Striking Advantage

So, our glorious Royal Mail workers have just been striking for two days thus generating lots of work clearing a backlog of letters to be delivered. What are the workers striking for? Modernization plans that they think will threaten their job security, apparently. “Let’s go on strike over job security.” Christ! These days if everyone went on strike because of concerns over their job security, there’d be absolutely no one at work – everyone would be on strike.

No doubt we’ll get more days of strikes in the coming weeks. That should push more customers away from Royal Mail into the hands of the competition (where there is some). Once gone they a lost customer is unlikely to return, in my experience. That ought to reduce the Royal Mail business even further thus endangering even more jobs. Wait a minute though, weren’t the workers going on strike to improve job security? Duh!

It is such a pity that Joe Public has no viable alternative for his letters – the ever decreasing numbers that still actually communicate on paper as opposed to electronically, that is. A monopoly, in this day and age? Surely not.

All is not gloom and despondency, though – there is one enormous advantage to these postal strikes. About 90% of what our postman puts through our door must be unsolicited junk mail that goes into the recycling bin after it has cluttered up our breakfast bar for a day or so. I once remarked on the volume of junk mail that our erstwhile chatty postman was forced to deliver but he said, “I don’t mind it, it’s the junk mail that keeps me in a job.” Strike days are great ‘cos we no longer get snowed under by junk mail.